A webpage is a page or document accessible via the Internet using a web browser. Webpages may include various elements that, when interpreted by a web browser, cause the web browser to display text, images, video, etc. Webpages are typically written using the HyperText Markup Language (HTML) and/or another type of markup language, such as the Extensible Markup Language (XML). A single webpage may contain hundreds or thousands (or more) of lines of code. Given the complexity of some webpages and the enormous amount of code, it is not uncommon for web developers to make errors or build in inefficiencies when writing code for a webpage. Some errors may cause the webpage to function incorrectly or not function at all, while some inefficiencies may detract from the webpage's performance (e.g., slowdown the load time of the webpage). Finding these errors and inefficiencies may be difficult given the large amount of code. Moreover, this problem is exacerbated by the fact that there are often multiple webpages in a single website and that many websites undergo somewhat frequent changes. Further, the nature of programming is such that making one change to fix one issue can cause another issue to arise.
To ensure webpages will work properly and efficiently, people may be hired to test webpages. Indeed, some companies employ people to test their webpages, particularly when they expect to make somewhat frequent changes. These testers are given the task of accessing and interacting with webpages to see how they respond to certain test inputs and to identify “bugs” in the webpage. In some cases, testers use software tools for capturing the HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) requests. Such HTTP requests may include numerous variables and values thereof as well as other values of headers, cookies, and query strings. The testers must review the HTTP requests line-by-line to identify problematic values. Because it is difficult to spot problematic values, some testers compare HTTP requests of a version of a webpage that they know works (or is acceptable) with HTTP requests of a version of the webpage that they are testing. This testing by comparison may be referred to as regression testing. Still, when performing regression testing, the testers must go back-and-forth between the requests and compare them line-by-line. As such, testing may be a tedious task that is prone to human errors and slows down the development and evolution of webpages.
The above described testing is mostly performed prior to publishing the webpage online or soon thereafter. After a webpage has been tested and is made accessible to the public, the webpage's performance may be monitored. Monitoring may include using software to collect network traffic and eyeballing the network traffic to identify concerns. HTTPWATCH and FIDDLER are two such tools for collecting and monitoring webpage traffic. Additionally, monitoring may include analyzing web analytics that are captured by cookies or other tags inserted into the webpage to collect web analytics as visitors access and interact with the webpage. While monitoring a webpage may be useful from a marketing standpoint, it is often preferable to discover and remedy problems with a webpage before it becomes publicly available.
Accordingly, new systems, devices, methodologies, and software are desired to simplify analysis and verification of new and/or updated webpages to improve the accuracy of testing webpages and/or reduce the amount of time used for testing webpages.